His writing was like poetry and song, all in one. Second best opening after "A Hundred Years of Solitude": "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds alwa

His writing was like poetry and song, all in one. Second best opening after "A Hundred Years of Solitude": "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide."